INDY RACING LEAGUE MEDIA CONFERENCE

January 19, 2005

Ryan Briscoe

Bryan Herta

BRYAN HERTA: I'm still smiling. It was laps as I would have liked, but still felt great to get on the road course. The car worked really well. I think there's still some things we'd like to improve on the car, but it's early days and it just felt good to turn right again.

BRYAN HERTA: I have to say I was pretty surprised in a good way. Dario had already tested and had told me the car was nice and fun to drive. I have to say that it was a lot more nimble, and the brakes were a lot better than I thought they'd be. I think there's still, like I said, a lot of improvement that's going to come as we learn about the car, too. I know there's more speed in the package.

RYAN BRISCOE: Yeah, I had a good day. With the team, we got through our full program. We tested a lot of stuff on the car. You know, it was really going quite well. It's a great way to be here. It's a great way to start the season. It doesn't really mean much. But it means we are looking good to start with.

RYAN BRISCOE: It's quite good actually. I mean, for a car that's never raced on a circuit before, it's doing quite well. I think we've got a lot to gain still. Still a lot of improvement to put on the car. But as a start point, it's really good. It's responsive to setup changes. It's easy to get a good balance. And, yeah, I mean, we've got a lot of work to do, but it's looking good.

BRYAN HERTA: Interesting. Yeah, we think so. We think definitely it's one of the areas that we're really putting a lot of focus on right now, you know, just learning there's some different pad options, master cylinders we can change to affect the feeling of the brakes. They seem to work quite well. It's just I think more a matter of getting the brakes to feel the way each driver wants them to feel. You know, everybody has their own little tweaks on how they like to run those.

RYAN BRISCOE: Yeah, last November I had my first test with Chip Ganassi Racing, that was at Phoenix Firebird Circuit. We went to the PIR oval. In December we had a one-day test for TRD at Sebring. Phoenix, I did three days total.

BRYAN HERTA: Literally I got three outings in today. We had some various issues that we were trying to fight off. You know, I didn't get through my entire test program, unfortunately, today so we've got a lot of extra work to try to do tomorrow. The good news is I've got plenty of tires for it, too. Just start first thing in the morning. I did the least laps I think today so I'll try and do the most tomorrow.

BRYAN HERTA: I did run the tire warmers. You know, for me it's sort of a new thing to run the tire warmers and for our team, too, to get used to it. For me, it was good to feel the difference. This guy, he's pretty much never been without tire warmers in a big car. He's coming from the other side. I don't know if you ran without tire warmers.

RYAN BRISCOE: We ran tire warmers at the end of the session. I think the rules are going to be that the qualifying is going to be one (inaudible) with tire warmers. We're trying to practice with that.

RYAN BRISCOE: I think the track was getting better all day. We put new tires on at the end of the day. Obviously, it was going to be the time to do my best personal lap of the day. My (inaudible) I've gotten the most out of them because of problems we had with the car and (inaudible) flags. It was obvious that that was going to be my better lap.

RYAN BRISCOE: They had different setups. We all have different setups in the cars. Their driving positions are quite similar. It's quite easy for them to swap cars and just get different opinions from each other's cars to see what the feedback is. It's a bit difficult for me because my position is difficult. Probably got a bit complicated having three drivers in three cars.

BRYAN HERTA: I think it's difficult to draw too many conclusions off the first test day because I don't think everybody showed everything they have quite yet. At this point it seemed pretty evenly matched. I mean, at different points there were Dallaras, Toyotas, Hondas, Chevy up top at one point, too. I think everybody sort of had their moment in the sun.

BRYAN HERTA: This is the first time I've driven an IRL IndyCar on a road course. I think after talking to Dario, he did a couple of tests at the end of the year and at the start of this year. You know, straightaway we were pretty pleasantly surprised by how good the Honda was. There weren't any real major issues getting up to speed on the road course. Now it seems like we're just into the mode of incremental improvements, just trying to find the sweet spot on the car. The engine is the same. On the ovals, we all know pretty much where we want to run these cars now, but there's a lot of areas for exploration right now on the road course. I think everybody is just trying to find what it takes to go fast.

RYAN BRISCOE: I don't know anything about St. Pete.

BRYAN HERTA: I think ultimately it's a lot different types of corners than what we'll see at St. Pete or a street course, even Watkins Glen or Sears Point, for that matter. But in the beginning stages of the road course testing, I think it's a good place, it's hard on brakes, so it's really good to focus on brake work. It's got some different types of corners, some slow corners and some medium stuff. You know, I think it will help us, but ultimately we're not going to go with this exact setup when we go to St. Pete. We'll adjust it.